Forum:Skin changes
Hoo boy. Wikia is rolling out their new skin now, and less than one month from now Monaco (what this wiki currently uses) will be removed entirely. Bascially, we're going to be forced to make some changes, and the default option is to switch to the new skin. This wouldn't be so bad except that the new skin is... bad. All article space has to be squeezed down to a width of ~700 pixels, which is really measly. The sidebar is a big honking 300 pixels wide, full of rather distracting interwiki ads, and its positioning on the right evidently gives headaches to people with right-eye-dominance, or something. Even more problematic is that, from what I can tell, the ability to customize the look of the wiki is IMMENSELY crippled. From what I can tell, the teletyped links we have now are impossible in the new skin, as is the ability to make it imitate the MSPA-site look. The custom tabber gallery style I worked out seems to be broken as well, which makes it absolutely unusable now. Editing the site's CSS to fix these problems apparantly breaks their new Terms of Service, so there's not a thing I can do about it. So yeah. It's pretty bad. It calls for something drastic: either downgrading to monobook, which is a skin that imitates the way Wikipedia used to look, or moving to a new free wiki service, like shoutwiki. Or keeping the new skin, I guess, but I think I've made it clear what my thoughts on that are. The monobook switch is the most enticing option, since moving the wiki to a whole new host just seems rather drastic, but I need to see what options are available customization-wise if we go that route. I'll be working on it. --Pigbuster 07:48, October 12, 2010 (UTC) UPDATE: Oasis is here. I've made a page for discussing it that ought to be a better place for discussion than this blog post's comments. --Pigbuster 18:53, October 22, 2010 (UTC) :Well I think we need to give wikia some time to change whats wrong. However, I am with you. This entire thing is pitiful. They need to give us the ability to move the side bar or make it smaller. Why isn't all that BS at the bottom of the page anyways? All we need is the search at the top. :I'm not sure how the tabber is broken, so if you could explain that. I even had the horrible thought that Infoboxes might as well take up the entire first section of the page. Its ridiculous that they neglected infoboxes which serve as a crucial part of the structure in wikis! :I do believe that these sites need to look better than monaco or monobook. Shoutwiki, and all other wiki alternatives are ugly. Andrew would have a better site if he cared about that sort of thing or frankly had the time/money/ability. Homestuck is vivid and full of color, and this wiki should reflect that! I think we need to file a complaint with a list of demands. Yeah we are just a small wikia, but its worth a shot. We need them to enable CSS editing, and for them to allow us to choose where the F-in sidebar goes. Lets not give up! Loverdesang October 12, 2010 ::If I know websites like Wikia, they're not going to change it no matter what we say. Janaro October 20, 2010 :Frankly, we hadn't even scratched the surface of monaco. I'm starting to realize how ugly this new skin really is compared to what people were able to do on monaco. Look at this difference: http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/narnia/hu/images/5/54/Printscreen01.gif :http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/narnia/hu/images/8/8d/Printscreen02.gif :Loverdesang October 12, 2010 :Every time I try out the new skin I get really irritated at it. I don't see why Wikia would make this change. Usually websites ADD functionality when they make improvements... :I'm not sure if we'd be able to have any influence over their decision, but I have to imagine they're seeing the 500+ comments on their blog about the update. There's a pretty unilateral disgust with the new format. If they're any kind of smart, they'll take a better look at this before they force any changes on us. Jumpjet2k October 12, 2010 :It's been like this for most of the day: :http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/5985/wutrdis.png :Should I be concerned with this, or is it part of what you're fixing? Octachoron October 13, 2010 ::That's happened to me occasionally. The page just gets broken, or something. I haven't changed anything CSS-wise, so it's not my doing. Pigbuster October 14, 2010 :The new skin is screwing up everything, I'm getting the same result Octachoron is,when I use MSPAwiki's Monaco skin. :You can at least block the non-wikia ads, and adblock takes care of the rest. :It feels like they are forcing us to use the new skin, and it looks terrible. :And why are they removing Monaco anyways? It makes no sense. Kratospie October 13, 2010 ::Wikia's obviously been messing with stuff. Right now Monaco works just fine and the new skin's acting up. ::They need to get their shit in order... Jumpjet2k October 13, 2010 ::Monaco is being removed because Wikia can't expend the resources for supporting two big skins. It's actually a good reason. Of course, the bad decisions on the Oasis design are NOT, but eh. Pigbuster October 18, 2010 :Jegus fuck WHY? :STUPID STUTID DUMB DUMB BLUH REFERENCE RAGE! :References aside, it does look horrible. LimeHunter7 October 18, 2010 :Well, it's looking like the move to the new skin is pretty inevitable, and the normal non-logged-in folk will be seeing everything in Oasis in just 2 more days. So unless we're moving the entire wiki, I guess we need to start preparing pages to suck a bit less on Oasis. :We probably ought to create a Category:Oasify to denote which pages need to be updated. Important changes will be making sure we don't have any pictures beside our Infoboxes (as on pages like Rose Lalonde, etc.) because they just don't fit at all anymore. :Pigbuster, regarding the tabber and CSS editing, I only see the following mention of CSS in the Wikia Terms of Use: You further agree to: Not intentionally block, remove, or otherwise obstruct the proper functioning and view of advertisements, and/or user interface and functionality by other users, including but not limited to changing or adding javascript or CSS changes to the Service that would prevent the proper display or function of advertisements and/or user interface and functionality. :(Okay, fuck, why weren't my line breaks even working here? That's retarded.) :My interpretation is that as long as we're not intentionally obstructing anything, CSS edits are fine, meaning that (at least legally) we can still keep the tabber. Are there additional technical issues that would keep it from working? I wouldn't imagine so, seeing as it still works when I view things in Oasis. :(Granted, we've still got some issues with it to figure out - mainly how wide it's getting on John Egbert and a few other pages. But we need to figure out first if we're gonna be able to keep it.) Jumpjet2k October 18, 2010 ::I've also noticed that when we set pictures to "Border" rather than "thumb," we don't see "Added by _____" anymore. Since that whole pic credit thing is pretty fucking retarded, I'm gonna start switching images over to Border wherever we don't really need any text by them. ::Also, a possible tabber fix: Perhaps we could have "Normal", "Baby", "Dream", and then just "Other." The latter would have an image of, say, just John's first suit, along with a link below to John's other outfits. Jumpjet2k October 18, 2010 ::Woah, looking at that... I don't see any reason why setting the content width to 100% would be forbidden, as it doesn't block/remove/obstruct any UI elements. That's... very good news, actually! ::The question is whether I'm able to edit the CSS at all, which remains to be seen. We can only hope. ::Also, I'm sorry about being absent for so long. Been busy/depressed due to college crap, and it's slowly getting better. I don't know if I'll ever be as active here as I once was, but we'll see. Pigbuster October 18, 2010 ::Based on what I'm seeing here and here, we can't alter the "fixed width". Not sure what exactly that means in regards to the content width, though. Where would the other UI stuff (Recent Activity/Photos/Spotlight) go if we changed it to 100%? ::Also, I posted a comment on Sannse's user blog there about the tabber. We'll see what she says. ::And hey, don't worry about being away. We've all got real life to deal with; it happens. Jumpjet2k October 18, 2010 ::The CSS I'm working on has a 100% page width, but won't obstruct anything, so the ads and user interface will look the way Wikia intends them to look, more or less. Hopefully they'll allow that. Pigbuster October 21, 2010 :You know, coming from the look of it, it does look nasty. I was wondering why it was so narrow in any case. :I think, in my tiniest of opinions, downgrade to Monobook. That's what I am thinking of in dealing with my own wiki, (but that may not be needed), and so keep some of the functionality. :(But I wouldn't bash it entirely, for there is one good thing, however minuscule. At least the base font actually works for me.) Isoraķatheð October 18, 2010 ::Unfortunately, I don't think downgrading to monobook is an option. I don't see any function to set it as the default wiki skin in my preferences, which means that it's Oasis or nothing, apparently. Pigbuster October 18, 2010 :This is just absolutely awful. I'm shitting my pants this is so bad. :Edit: Also notice how they made the World of Warcraft wikia wider than everyone else's because "the average visitors have wider monitors." Complete and utter turkeyshit fucktroddle. BobNintendo October 22, 2010 ::Ahaha, wow. That's such a shitty excuse. The Wowwiki is the more popular wiki on the site, no doubt bringing in tons of ad revenue, and they were threatening to leave so Wikia bribed them to stay. It's so blatantly obvious it's almost admirable that they have the balls to lie about it. Hooo man. ::And the WOW wiki went ahead and moved anyway, so the wider size accomplishes nothing but pissing off everybody. WHOOPS. Pigbuster October 22, 2010